UnitedHealth Group's big data venture is plying new waters in deals with several powerful healthcare institutions, trying to create value with one of healthcare's largest databases.
Optum Labs, a research center co-founded by United's Optum and the Mayo Clinic, has signed on as partners the Harvard Medical School Department of Health Care Policy, the Medica Research Institute Merck and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
They join institutions like the American Medical Group Association, Boston Scientific, Pfizer and Tufts Medical Center in calling on Optum to dive into their data and search for new insights or solutions to problems in healthcare delivery, efficacy and management.
"Our growing base of partners enables Optum Labs to expand into additional areas of health care research, paving the way for new initiatives that can be directly translated to improvements in patient care," said Paul Bleicher, MD, CEO of Optum Labs in a media release. "We are excited by the diverse perspectives our partners are bringing to a growing number of research studies under way."
According to Bleicher, Optum Labs has the largest, de-identified patient database in healthcare, with research focusing on the clinical environment "through prototyping and testing in Optum and partners' care settings."
Optum Labs and its partners are incorporating a wide variety of datasets, including what in many provider settings are newly-digitized medical records and emerging analysis approaches.
Among the research projects being pursued are investigations of disease care pathways, variations in the use of proton beam therapy for cancer, hospital admission for diabetes complications and an attempt to use observational data to double check the results of the ACCORD lipid trial, which found little cardiovascular disease prevention benefits in combined statin-fibrate medication for diabetics.
A recent observational study using the Optum Labs database on diabetes medication compared the costs and benefits for metformin with newer, second-line drugs, and concluded that the second-line drug class of sulfonylureas may be more cost-effective and have longer health benefits.
Collaborating with public and private sector healthcare organizations, Optum Labs is hoping to become one node in a "learning healthcare system," as the organization's leaders wrote in Health Affairs earlier this year.
Meanwhile, for United, Optum remains a diverse subsidiary with units devoted to drug benefits, billing management and direct clinics, and it has been a significant source of business growth -- contributing nearly 30 percent of enterprise earnings in this year's second quarter.
The insurer is also hoping to rely on Optum to adapt to decreasing Medicare Advantage rates, as UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley said in a recent conference call.
"We expect to deliver overall Medicare growth for years to come, driven by favorable demographic trends and our strong local market cost and value positions, supported by deeply integrated Optum resources in pharmacy services, primary care delivery, health calls, data analytics and compliance."